esshesse, there are four versions of “The Scream;” I can’t recall offhand if they are all on cardboard. Many years ago, there was an extraordinary Munch exhibit in California where I saw all of his major works, including the version of The Scream that many consider THE Scream — the version that usually resides in Oslo’s National Gallery.

Now that version definitely is on cardboard, and I have to tell you: It looked grayed-out and faded compared to Munch’s other works, which were painted on canvas in very bright colors. The canvas works looked spectacular and vibrant, but The Scream seemed to be dying before our eyes. (And this was, what, maybe 35 years ago.)

Now, I’m not trying to talk you out of painting on cardboard, because I think it can be done safely. You simply have to use better technique than Munch did. I think he just glopped pastel, tempera and oil directly on a piece of gray cardboard without proper preparation.

This artist[/URL] says that he has had good results painting on cardboard “impregnated with epoxy resin.”

Personally, I would go a step up and use illustration board. Always use cold press; hot press is too slick. Crescent 99 university grade board is acid-free but cheap — at Blick, it’s less than seven bucks for a sheet of 30×40, from you can cut a number of different panels.

(The cool thing about illo board is that you can “re-proportion” your composition as you go along. Wanna lose just an inch on the right side? Just get out your trusty exacto blade and your T-square. Bonnard use to do that with canvas, but illo board is much easier.)

When I was an illustrator working in airbrush acrylics, I would just start painting directly on the board. Permanence wasn’t on my mind.

Now, using oils, I would first use a sealer of some kind. This could be PVA glue — the kind sold in art stores, not the white glue you find everywhere else. In a pinch, I might spray on something like Krylon crystal clear. But the best solution is Golden’s GAC 100, which costs ten or eleven dollars for eight ounces. Use it carefully and one bottle will last you a while.

Then hit it with acrylic Gesso. Since your surface is white to begin with, you won’t need too many coats. Many here will tell you to shell out for the best quality Gesso, but student grade will suffice. Use a couple of thin layers, alternating the brush strokes. Sand. Then add some more layers.

As I go along, I use a mixture of water, gesso and talcum powder. (Real talc, not the stuff made with corn starch.) This is because I like an absorbent surface; you may not. Kaolin clay or marble dust are also good, but talc is easily found and cheap (in the form of baby powder). When working on hard panel, my top layers are very wet, which tends to eliminate the visible brush strokes.

Sand, sand, sand. Carefully. I like an eggshell-smooth surface, if possible.

You’ll also want to paint, or at least wet, the reverse side of the board, to help prevent warping. Here, house paint will do.

For larger works, cradles are easy to make. You just need four pieces of cheap, lightweight wood, about a half-inch thick, cut to the size of the panel. Just glue them to the reverse side of the board with ordinary Elmer’s glue. Place the board face up on your dining room table, put a clean sheet on the surface to protect it, then place books on the edges of the board to “clamp” it into place. The next day, they should be glued in place firmly.

If you are looking to save money, look around for that place in your neighborhood where people tend to dump discarded furniture. (Every neighborhood seems to have a place where that happens.) You can often find flat, thin pieces of wood. Right now, I’m preparing a panel made in the fashion described above, using a discarded kitchen cabinet door. It took a fair amount of Gesso and much sanding, but I finally have that smooth surface I like, with no trace of the wood grain.

Sorry to ramble!

I’m also just playing around, and have discovered that supports, even cheap ones, are infuriatingly expensive for experiments. And you want to experiment a lot

What I just did was take really cheap watercolour paper (which I happened to have for free) and lay down a few layers of acrylic medium (which I also just happened to have) on them. Gesso would probably be better, especially when you are trying to get a feel for the typical – I actually wanted a slightly slicker surface and less absorbent surface, so opted for mixing myself a semi-matte acrylic medium. Threw in some acrylic colour (fleshy mud) too on some of them.
Main thing here is actually to seal the paper so you don’t get oil leaking through to the paper and staining it in unpredictable ways. Experiments that degrade to a weird mess within a few months are infuriating – you can no longer see what you learned from them then.

I absolutely hear you on the flimsyness – it can be infuriating. What you absolutely need is some kind of stiffer board to tape or clip your cardboard/paper to when you are working on it. (Though I’ve discovered that I tend to get carried away and end up sitting on the floor with one or another experiment paper just in my hand or on the floor protection…:clear: )

One final note, even though you didn’t ask: how cheap is your very very cheap oils?
When I first started experimenting I bought a 24 set of mini tubes of DalerRowney Simply. Luckily I also happened to have a) a few tubes of high end paint (Charvin and Natural Pigments) and b) a rather antique set of Winton.
Those cheap mini-tubes are absolute crap in comparison to Winton [FONT=”Arial Narrow](and another species when compared to Charvin or Williamsburg – Natural Pigments is always another species, so unfair to compare that)[/FONT]. The texture is wrong, the drying is weird, the mixing is seriously strange – everything is just
Even just a few tubes (red, blue/black, yellow, ochre & white for instance) of something a little better (Winton, Georgian, Van Gogh etc) will give a much more enjoyable experience.

Your missing a trick. Dont try to hide the fact its painted on cardboard accentuate it. Rip the corners. Crease it. Bodge holes in it. Then paint on it. People will say your a genius for painting on anything. And then call it Modern Art. Canvas is trad.

When I started, I went to the local DIY place, bought an 8×4′ sheet of hardboard, and got them to cut it up into painting-sized panels on their fancy saw for cutting sheet materials (ie, straight and accurate). Even now, over 15 years later, it’s still about £8 for a sheet. If it was cut into 16×24″ panels, say, you get 12 panels from a sheet – very cheap per panel.

Then prepare as desired. My first attempts were just coated on the smooth side with white household emulsion paint, which seemed to work for acrylics, but I did get some acrylic gesso soon after. I switched to cheapie stretched canvasses after a while, and still have a load of the unused (and uncoated) hardboard panels lying around.

I will often paint on the back of cereal boxes, most the time I will prepare it with just a diluted glue. Elmer’s glue is a PVA glue by the way, it’s just not PH neutral, which you should be going for if working with paper. Most wood glues actually happen to be fairly close to PH neutral, especially the ones for wood workers. If you feel you need a white surface to start on for some reason of technique go for it, but personally like a less vibrant surface, it’s easier to compare my colors to each other and build lights and darks easier.

The issue may be that your cardboard has some sort of coating that makes paint not want to stick (sometimes they will coat white cardboard with a kind of clear coating that makes oil paint not want to stick to it very well). You can paint on it without surface prep if you like. Taping down your cardboard helps a ton, I tape mine to a piece of plexiglas that a company my wife worked for was throwing out.